


Ghosts of fandom characterization in All the Other Ghosts

by CyanoFal



Category: Glee
Genre: All The Other Ghosts - Freeform, M/M, Meta, Nonfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-26 18:35:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20394289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CyanoFal/pseuds/CyanoFal
Summary: A meta analysis of Rainjoys's characterization of Kurt and Blaine in her fic All the Other Ghosts and how this characterization reflects fandom trends at large





	Ghosts of fandom characterization in All the Other Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> Spaceorphan18 had some cool analysis on AtOG and I had Enough Thoughts on the fic that it pulled me out of hibernation.

#### An Introduction

This is going to be discussing gendered interpretations of Kurt and Blaine’s character’s. I want to make it clear that analyzing the characters in this way is making no statement about the actors who portray them. Chris Colfer and Darren Criss are separate individuals from the characters they created, and while traits can transfer over, as in any art project, I am making this analysis for how the traits manifest in Glee’s narrative, not opining on their personal lives.

#### A Conversational Review

Since this fic was written in earlier Glee years, I agree with the consensus on Spaceorphan18′s post that it really pulls from early-Kurt characterization and open-book Blaine. I don’t read Klaine fic anymore so who knows if this is still true, but there was a general trend when Glee was airing that Kurt was the precise, salad-eating, graceful, lithe partner and Blaine was the masc, hairy, clumsy, rugged, practical partner. We get this Kurt perception because season 1 (and probably early 2) Kurt was very femme. He choreographed Beyonce routines with Brittany and Tina. He stitched his own Lady Gaga costumes. He was proud of his high voice. He was unabashedly into women’s fashion and style. We get Blaine’s masc perceptions because if one partner is femme, heteronormative habits have us thinking the other has to be masc, and we knew Blaine was a “mentor” figure and that carries a certain perception of masculinity, and we knew Blaine’s dad made him fix a car (even if Blaine didn’t like doing it) and we knew Blaine liked talking about football, and those were really the foundational Blaine data we knew.

These are the traits people picked up and ran with, and the fics didn’t always adapt with the show. Kurt was more likely to eat a whole cheesecake and snap at waiters while Blaine was the one eating a salad with a fork and a knife. Kurt was constantly tripping in dance routines and Blaine did jumping tricks with hula hoops without losing a step. Kurt and Blaine both carried a variety of femme and masc traits, and as the series went on, Blaine adopted more femininity and Kurt rescinded it.

#### Early Kurt Perceptions

This shift is important to understand why ATOG’s characterization doesn’t age smoothly. If we stop and think about why this shift happened, I think it’s important to understand how Kurt was created in the first place. Ryan Murphy liked Chris Colfer’s audition, and he created Kurt based off of his (RM’s) own life experiences growing up in Indiana. Kurt was originally based off of RM’s own teenage interests and personality. His early season 1 commentary is more bitchy-sarcastic than what I can only describe as the later season’s Stiles-Stilinski-like humor. Season 1 Kurt’s salient interests were fashion as much as performance. Season 1 Kurt loved emulating feminine roles. Season 1 Kurt was more outward and extroverted about these passions, ambitious in his activities, but he was stealthily aggressive in his insults and defense mechanisms.

#### Developments - Chris Colfer and Writers

But as Chris Colfer shaped the character, Kurt adopted more Chris-like traits. Based on the multitude of interviews I used to watch with this actor, I think Chris was always bullied so much for his more feminine qualities and as a teenager suddenly thrust into this overwhelming limelight, he was uncomfortable highlighting those qualities even more. With fame and support also came even more harassment and bullying, and he’s spoken at length of incidents where the two sides merged into one singular, terrifying experience, especially for a teenager new to this professional world, especially for a teenager who publicly, globally, came out in a hostile time. Add to the mix that CC wasn’t the same femme kid himself, I can see him wanting to steer his first role from that perception for concerns of being typecast. RM envisioned Kurt wearing the same costumes in the Single Ladies dance, and CC changed it to the more covering unitard and leggings he ended up wearing. Kurt’s interest in fashion waned and his interest in writing and performing masc characters grew. Kurt went from using cutting jibes to physical aggression and blunt insults in disputes. I cannot see early S1 or S2 Kurt smacking a lunch bag so it goes flying because he was upset with his boyfriend like he did in S5. Kurt went from physically contained to physically expansive, a traditionally masculine expression of posture and anger.

(It should be made clear, just because I know how fandom is, that I am talking about Kurt the character, not Chris Colfer the person. When discussing art, I don’t think it’s worth critiquing actors for their positions or personalities. I don’t particularly care about CC’s own relationship to gender because I don’t personally know him. I am interested in how Kurt’s character changed as a function of the story Glee told about it, and the behind-the-scenes notation is just a way to delineate where I see its roots.)

#### What Does It Mean for Fic Reading?

Some of the weirdness in reading ATOG Kurt in our post-Glee age, the reason people might feel like they’re reading a girl-coded Kurt instead of Kurt himself, is because of this shift in gendered behavior. A fic written in S1 took Kurt’s more stealthy, subtle, or, at his worst, manipulative forms of confrontation (thinking of Kurt’s makeover for Rachel or his argument to get Finn to tell Quinn’s parents about the baby or his match-making plans for his dad) and transfused them into a ghost-like superhero, whose skills were subterfuge, matter manipulation, invisibility - Mr. Cellophane turned into an offensive skillset. Season 6 Kurt isn’t like that. S6 Kurt learned how to be more direct about his feelings and desires. S6 Kurt learned how to physically protect himself and others with his material body. Later season Kurt takes up space, even to the point of being aggressive about preserving it (which can be read in itself as a trauma response - learned how to be big, now he needs to learn how to share the space in a moderated way again. That’s a separate post in itself). If this characterization is strange, it is because we’re reading a Kurt displaced from time, a sixteen-year-old Kurt placed in a mid-twenties body.

#### Early Blaine Characterization

There is a similar jarring effect when reading Blaine. As Spaceorphan18 and others have stated, Blaine started as a blank slate character. While most Glee characters started with a defining quirk or stereotype Glee deconstructed over time (Kurt as the femme gay boy, Mercedes as the loud Black girl, Finn as the dumb jock, Rachel the diva ingenue), Blaine was there as the love interest, the unofficial mentor. That is less a defining niche as it is a relationship to Kurt. Thus, I speculate fandom filled in traits to flesh Blaine out around Kurt’s qualities. This is probably because of tropes like opposites attract, ingrained structures of heteronormativity, and even just the fact that dynamic couples are interesting to write about. Complementarily different pairings give a range of behaviors to write from.

#### Developments - Narrative and Physicality

As Glee continued Blaine’s story though, we learn new parts of him. Blaine in S2 was confident, secure in himself partially because he was in a familiar territory and partially because it was bravado. We learn Blaine was gay-bashed as a young teen and transferred to Dalton. He feels like he ran away instead of sticking up for himself. Blaine has his own trauma response in this - flight, whether it’s through physically escaping or escaping through work (after S5 fights Blaine goes for long walks, Blaine joins 50 different clubs to deal with his break-up, Blaine considers transferring back to Dalton, probably another essay in itself). This is a feminized response in itself - flight not fight - and Blaine’s shame potentially comes from not living up to masculine ideals placed upon him (especially by his dad, as we can translate from that car conversion process).

If you look through the Glee promotional photos, you can see Blaine’s physicality shift into more feminized stances. Season 3 promo pics have Blaine dressed in his Dalton clothes, adjusting his tie, blank-slate Blaine who is part of the crowd. Season 5 Blaine has a sense of style, but even more he has a sense of posture - in the photos singing into the microphones, Blaine grips the stand close to his body, looks down to the floor, holds his legs close together with a hip just a bit askew. Blaine’s body language goes from business-like to almost demure, that contained, closed-in posture associated more closely with femininity (”we teach girls to shrink themselves” as the famous Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie quote goes). Darren Criss was careful to have Blaine clap in a way starting at the wrists, the gesture more than the sound. Watching interviews where he shows the transformation to Blaine, he raises his carriage for the appearance of confidence but pitches his voice higher with almost a slight uptalk, revealing the insecurity beneath the precision in a traditionally feminine way.

#### Do How Do the Blaines Compare?

Darren Criss is a very physical actor, and I think his decisions merged with the writers’ developing knowledge about Blaine to create a character who, like Kurt, has his own blend of masculine and feminine qualities. As ATOG was written before this trajectory played out, the fic’s characterization falls onto the early fandom speculation. Blaine’s biggest thing was he swept Kurt off his feet (metaphorically, romantically) and saved him from the bullies. Thus, Blaine’s superhero persona is Phalanx, a shield, the person who often sweeps through and lifts Kurt out of sticky situations. He throws his shields, a range weapon but still a more aggressive option than phasing through walls. This is at odds with the Blaine we come to know, who completely collapses when his perfectionism can’t save him, the Blaine who holds in his feelings under the optimistic theatre-kid veneer until he has to explode or flee (Cough Syrup or Dynamic Duets), the Blaine who desperately just wants his friends and boyfriend to give him some affection and tell him he still loves him even when he isn’t perfect (“Will you love me? Even with my dark side?” / “I honestly thought I would never find real love”). It’s jarring because we know Blaine isn’t the dapper romance hero whose love will pull Kurt out of his problems. We know Blaine is his own messy person too. His need to be a perfect partner comes less out of providing safety and more about proving he is lovable.

#### Why Does This Matter?

Tracking the differences between the fic and the show can reveal why a beloved fic can be harder to read now that the show is over. It can delineate how an adaption diverges from its source material depending on timing and fandom involvement. ATOG could easily change the names and be its own story because of how these differences emerged, and if RJ ever chose to do so, they would have a good case that not only is this fic transformative, but also it’s an entirely different story for copyright claims. This also brings up another question concerning adaptions, one constantly raised with movies. How much can an adaption stick to its source material? How much can we guess correctly about a person/character from incomplete information?

I think this also raises a different interpretative point too, though, on the reader’s level. It is possible to interpret ATOG Kurt as a girl-coded version of Kurt, but perhaps it is less the gender of it all as it is the qualities misaligning with the canon Kurt we have come to know. This fic ran with qualities known (and potentially exaggerated) from early season Kurt. It’s not so much out-of-character as it is outdated. However, because of socialization, there are always experiences femme girls perceive differently than femme boys, and writers can always stand to do some beta readings to see if their characterization feels in tune with people’s lived experiences or not.

(Recognizing this is a fanfic and a free labor of love and thus it is difficult to always complete that researching work, but also recognizing that if fanfiction is art, it has the same ethical obligations as literary publishing does.)

#### A Small Acknowledgement

I just also wanted to recognize how much I loved this fic when I first read it and leveraging a full criticism is a mode of interpretation and engagement and not dismissal, RJ if you ever read this I was very sad when you stopped writing Glee fic and I’ve written my own stories spinning off your premises okay byeee

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted July 22, 2019, on my new tumblr, midwexican


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